Catching up with Toby Keith

At the same time, he's not bro country's No. 1 fan. It's too redundant in its obsession with whiskey and girls, even for the singer who brought us "Whiskey Girl," it seems.

Not known to be a sufferer of shyness when it comes to voicing an opinion, Keith talked about bro country's domination of the country market and whether he played a role in pioneering the genre.

Keith also discussed how it might affect the singing career of his daughter, Krystal Keith, one of his opening acts Friday night at Riverbend.

I remember reading in Country Weekly magazine many years ago that you were a fan of the John Prine record "Lost Dogs and Missed Blessings." I don't know if Prine is one of yours, but who are some of your favorite songwriters?

He'd be up there. Roger Miller. Hag (Merle Haggard). Willie (Nelson). Dolly (Parton). Dolly's a great writer. That'd be a few that I'd go straight to.

You're naming people from a generation ahead of you. Do you have any contemporary songwriters that you turn to?

I don't. I don't listen close enough to know if any of them are any good or not, you know what I mean? I know there's a lot of people that can write a song once in a while, but I don't know if anybody writes as much as I do.

Is it enough to be a good songwriter and a good singer to make it as a country performer, or do you need to create a persona in order to be a star?

I think if you write most of your stuff, and you're having hits on the radio, I think you create your own persona. All those people I'm talking about had that, right? Willie's got a persona, Hag's got one, Dolly's got one. (Johnny) Cash had one.

If you stick around 30 or 40 years and write your own stuff, it bleeds through and you create your own persona. That being said, there's a lot of people around that don't write, that have hits, that don't have quite the persona that still get by and make a great living and are relevant to the business.

Do you like bro country?

A couple of guys I write with are like 40, and they said, "Man, bro country makes me feel really old." These songwriters are 38, 40 years old. They should be right in the middle of writing hits. They're great songwriters. And being right in the middle of bro country makes them feel old.

Is that how you feel? Does it make you feel old?

I don't understand the saturation. There are several of these acts in bro country that have come to me and said, "You inspired us." I was an inspiration for some of this.

Stepping out and doing something crazy once in a while to me was fun, "I Wanna Talk About Me," things like that. That was a blast, but I didn't come back and give you a bushel basket full of it, you know what I mean?

This is fun, this is a great party song, and then I came back with, "As Good As I Once Was," "I Love This Bar," some more country.

I'm always for somebody doing what they want to do and stepping out, but I can't believe the saturation of it. I can't believe it's taken over the whole entire industry, and there's nowhere for the music that brought us here to be played today.

Do you feel responsible for bro country?

I don't feel responsible for the saturation. I'm always for people stepping out. But it's like, you sit down at the dinner table, I just want anchovies on my pizza. I don't get anchovies very much. I want anchovies on my pizza. And you look up five minutes later and the only thing they're selling at the grocery store is anchovies. Nothing else. You can't buy vegetables. You can't buy fruit. You can't buy meat. That's the extreme that I feel like it went to.

Doing something out of the box and having a little fun once in a while is great, but I feel like I still need to be true to the whole core of our foundation and our business.

What are some of the attributes you like about Krystal Keith as a singer and songwriter?

I like her authentic, organic gene. She's a little bit old school. The stuff she listens to and the stuff she wants to play and sing is like Patsy Cline.

People on the label go, "Yeah, but that's not really what we're looking for to go to radio with right now," and she's like, "I don't give a (care). This is what I like."

The sad part is, as they informed me, right in the middle of trying to figure out something to go to radio with, that there's only three female acts that are getting played in the bro country world, and that's the three big ones: Taylor (Swift), Carrie (Underwood) and Miranda (Lambert).

It's not really a girls' market. It's really a bad time for trying to break out.